2025 FENV Changemaker Award Nominees

Grayson Barke (He/Him) | BSc, Environmental Science, Applied Biology Stream

What makes Grayson a Changemaker?

Grayson Barke is a member of SFU’s Environmental Science Student Union and the SFSS’s Equity and Sustainability Committee working to improve both student experience and environmental policy at SFU.

As the undergraduate student representative in the School of Environmental Science, Grayson attended departmental meetings where he provided valuable insights to faculty and staff. Off-campus, he volunteers with the City of Coquitlam’s Sustainability and Environmental Advisory Committee and helps to organize forums on urban forestry and workshops on climate adaptation in the Tri-Cities.

Sukhman Khosa (She/Her) | BEnv, Resource and Environmental Management

What makes Sukhman a Changemaker?

Sukhman has stepped in to a volunteer role to inspire the next generation of Changemakers back in her hometown of Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, India, at her former high school—Smt. Maina Devi Public School. She began a Co-op work term in January with A2P Energy in Mohali, Punjab. 

She used the opportunity of being back near her hometown to connect with the principal at Smt. Maina Devi Public School and offered to share knowledge from her studies at SFU with students at the school who are interested in environmental issues. Sukhman is helping to foster positive change through this connection with her former high school. The program is still in the early stages, but she is "planting the seeds" to inspire and lift a project of interest off the ground and we're excited to see what unfolds.

Max Macinnes-Cann (She/They) | BENV, Global Environmental Systems

What makes Max a Changemaker?

Max is a leader and changemaker, always looking for opportunities to help drive local community climate solutions.

When Max joined the Faculty of Environment to study Global Environmental Systems in 2022, she brought a wealth of experience in climate action and education. Max has continued this work through presentations about climate action to her peers and as a member of the City of New Westminster's inaugural Youth Climate Leadership Team, where she volunteers her time to making a real impact on the City's climate goals.

Max is currently working on a project to daylight a lost stream, which means bringing formerly buried or culverted streams back to the surface. The project’s goal is climate mitigation through ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation to reduce flooding and environmental education throughout the whole process.

At SFU, Max is a leader and community-builder. She is currently part of the Student Leadership Team, SFU Jazz Band, and the co-chair of the Geography Student Union. In all these roles, Max embodies a commitment to justice, care, and uplifting others. Most recently, Max led a collaboration between SFU and UBC's undergraduate geography groups through the Climate Futures Town Hall and was one of the emcees for RANGE 2025, a conference by and for students interested in geography.

Whether she is organizing events that bring Faculty of Environment students together or being a voice for the planet at conferences, committees, and forums, Max is a curious, inclusive, and action-oriented changemaker.

Relevant links

• New West Lost Streams
• City of New West Mayors Youth Climate Leadership Team
• Geography Student Union
• Climate Futures Town Hall

Please note that this nominee received multiple independant nominations and submissions were synthesized into the above nomination.

Rameesa Rahman (She/Her) | Environmental Science

What makes Rameesa a Changemaker?

Rameesa is passionate about driving meaningful environmental and social change, which is why she has dedicated her time to climate equity, sustainability and community leadership at SFU.

As a Climate Equity Facilitator with Embark Sustainability’s Climate Equity Collective, she works alongside her team to organize workshops that bridge climate science and social justice. Their goal is to create engaging, accessible opportunities for students to explore sustainability through an equity lens while taking meaningful action. One example of this is the Upcycling Workshop, where they guided 10–15 participants in transforming old t-shirts into tote bags. This hands-on activity not only encouraged creativity but also reinforced the importance of reusing and recycling—demonstrating how sustainability can be both practical and artistic.

Another workshop, Penning Palestine, provided a space for students to write letters of solidarity, highlighting the connection between environmental justice and broader social justice movements. They have more workshops planned to continue fostering conversations and action on climate equity. Through these efforts, Rameesa is committed to ensuring that climate solutions are inclusive, accessible, and community-driven.

Beyond her work in climate equity, she is deeply committed to mentorship and community-building. As both an EnvironMentors Peer Mentor and a Bridging Environments Mentor, she supports students by helping them navigate resources within the department and across campus, addressing challenges they may face and fostering connections within the SFU community. Additionally, as a HIVE Leader, she helps incoming students transition into university life, ensuring they feel supported and welcomed.

At the Communicating Climate Hope 2024 conference, Rameesa worked as a session coordinator, helping organize panels that brought together diverse voices to discuss climate communication. While she wasn’t a speaker herself, her role was all about making sure everything ran smoothly, coordinating logistics, supporting speakers and ensuring each session created space for meaningful conversations. From working with Indigenous leaders to youth activists, she helped shape a platform where underrepresented perspectives could be heard and celebrated. It was incredibly rewarding for her to play a part in amplifying these voices and making the conference a success.

Matthew Syvenky (He/Him) | Resource and Environmental Management, Minor in Physical Geography, certificate in Geographic Information Systems

What makes Matthew a Changemaker?

Matthew is an undergraduate student who dedicates his free time towards stewarding ecosystems and advocating for positive environmental action. When Matthew is not in school, he is usually out hiking, scuba diving, or committing himself to his various volunteer roles.

Matthew is on the board of directors for the Invasive Species Council of Metro Vancouver and the Cariboo Heights Forest Preservation Society, using his unique position as the youngest person on these boards to offer diverse perspective on discussions. Matthew helps run booths for the Cariboo Heights Forest at city-wide events like Rivers Day and Burnaby Blooms, where he engages with the public to share stories about the forest and the importance of protecting urban green spaces. The Cariboo Heights Forest, the city's largest unprotected continuous green space, has been zoned for development for decades. Through advocacy and collaboration with the city of Burnaby and the general public, the Cariboo Heights Forest is proposed to be protected in Burnaby's new planning proposal.

As part of his participation in the Canadian Conservation Corps three years ago, Matthew initiated an ecosystem restoration project called Rubus Restoration. Through collaboration with the city of Burnaby, the Cariboo Heights Forest Preservation Society, and BC Hydro, Matthew recruited volunteers to dedicate 235 volunteer hours, removing roughly 300 kilograms of invasive Himalayan blackberry. He and volunteers restored the site with hundreds of native seeds and over 60 nursery plants.

For eight months, Matthew served as the chair of BC Nature's Climate Committee. The climate committee collaborated with local and national not-for-profits on climate advocacy and education. Representing BC Nature's more than 6,000 members, Matthew and the committee led discussions with politicians and local media regarding the climate crisis. Matthew stepped down from his role to pursue a field research position with SFU's paleoglaciology lab.

In the past couple years, Matthew has spent months out and about in Metro Vancouver restoring ecosystems as a professional habitat restoration technician. In his role, Matthew and his crew collaborate to remove invasive species and restore the site with native species. Matthew's favourite site is Burns Bog in Delta, where he has spent months working with his team to remove overabundant pine trees.

Matthew recently returned from a semester studying abroad in Auckland, New Zealand. During his time overseas, Matthew spent four weeks volunteering on various off-shore island sanctuaries. On these islands, he got busy removing invasive species, supplying endangered, endemic birds with food and water, and maintaining the self-sufficient facilities on the islands. Matthew's favourite bird he met on these islands is the Takahē, and he strongly recommends you look up a picture of one.

Relevant links:

• LinkedIn
• National Observer article, "In his spare time, he helped save a forest"
• Burnaby 2023 Environmental Award Winners
• FENV Feature, "Student RA's summer in the wilderness yields new passion for research and exploration"
• Nature Vancouver Scholarship 2023
• Invasive Species Council of BC 2022 ‘Together in Action’ Award Winners

Gabrielle Wong (She/They) | Human Geography, Social Data Analystics minor and an Urban Studies Certificate

What makes Gabrielle a Changemaker?

Gabrielle Wong’s nomination as an FENV Changemaker has officially been put forward by the Geography Student Union, in recognition of a half a decade of her outstanding volunteer contributions to our Union, Faculty, and broader SFU community. Her relentless community efforts to improve the lives and experiences of students have touched the lives of thousands in a myriad of ways, almost too numerous to count. 

Gabrielle has been the Co-Chair of the Geographer Student Union for three years, where she has continued to pioneer new student initiatives, such as the chief organizer of RANGE, which is a student-run geography conference. A first of its kind student event for the SFU Faculty of Environment, RANGE has brought together hundreds of student geographers and given them a platform to share their research, passion, and mutual love of Geography. Gabrielle has fostered connections within the Department of Geography and created strong relationships between staff, faculty, professors, and students to create a wonderful, interconnected community of geographers at SFU. Gabrielle also boasts a myriad of volunteer experience at SFU more broadly, serving as a HIVE Leader for three consecutive years, an EnvironMentor, and Student Learning Commons peer educator.

She was also one of the chief architects of the Bridging Environment's program, a community outreach program led by the FENV Dean’s Office that connects current SFU Environment students with local high school Environment/Green clubs and tasks or supports them with completing a project based on a central theme.

As a Research Assistant with Dr Magie Ramírez, Gabrielle has researched the impact of Airbnb’s on gentrification and evictions in Mexico City. Gabrielle is part of a team that is currently creating a bilingual story map website to share their findings on Airbnb impacts with both academics and housing justice activists in Mexico City. By doing so, this will promote spatial justice within the city, as well as promote advocacy and education on gentrification.  

As a Research Assistant to Dr. Rosemary Collard in the Extinction Paradox Lab, Gabrielle has researched how the state and forestry companies in BC are impacting caribou conservation. Gabrielle’s research adds to broader bodies of work on political ecologies within BC, and is very important to protecting biodiversity as well as educating people on state-nature interactions.  

Gabrielle has volunteered at SFU’s Academics First Tutoring Program for over two years, in which they tutor student athletes, Indigenous students, refugee and newcomer students, and Uggla Family scholars in order to help them connect deeply with course content and foster effective learning strategies.  

Gabrielle volunteers outside of SFU as the Board President of the Debate and Speech Association of British Columbia, organizing many debate events and tournaments every year, which helps countless high schoolers improve their public speaking skills. She has also created social change through her project ‘Finding Present.’ As Team Lead of Finding Present, Gabrielle has created opportunities for youth to share their art through art contests, made art more accessible by crafting and delivering 60 art boxes to youth around Langely, and completed a collaboration with another local organization Senior Stamps to deliver art to care homes. The group's projects have included Crafting Circles that use art to promote mental health and wellbeing amongst youth in Langley, a project that received a 2022-2023 SFU Community Engagement Award, and most recently, a Climate ArtFest that encouraged youth to combine climate data and their artistic skills to promote climate education and advocacy.

This Spring is Gabrielle’s last at SFU. Please help us award her the distinguished recognition she has earned through a career of outstanding volunteer service.Relevant links

• Warren Gill Award Announcement
  
• LinkedIn
• Debate and Speech BC
  

MacNeill Green Team, A.R. MacNeill Secondary School

Team

Presidents: Martin Li, Hannah Chan
Execs: Kevin Ren, Nicholas Sun, Pearly Wu, Beverly Wang, Vanessa So, Jason Yeo, Cayleb Yu
Exec Applicants: Wilson Huynh, Jonathan Caluori, Leilah Rusimovici, Daniel So, Diyar Ali, Pearly Wu, Angel Wai, Leo liu, Gordon Wong, Warren Sun, Emily Pan, Jai Sharan
Mentor: Ryan Yu

Project name

Project Evergreen

Description

Project Evergreen is an initiative at MacNeill Secondary School to improve recycling awareness and practices, with an overarching goal of cutting down the total amount of waste generation by staff and students. Our success in this campaign will be measured through the overall decrease in waste during the next district-wide garbage audit, alongside the results from a survey the team will be sending around the school ~two weeks after the campaign.

Our project aims to contribute to positive change by decreasing the unsustainable dumping of unsorted waste on our shared planet and promoting lifelong recycling habits for staff and students.

Earthwise Club, Burnaby Mountain Secondary

Team

Hershika Garg, Vivienne Szentirmai, Julia Kalirai, Alexandra Szentirmai and mentor, Laurence Magenga

Project name

Unwrap from Single Use

Description

This project's objective is to collect data about usage of single use plastic within the school cafeteria. Then, by tracking single-use plastic consumption in the school cafeteria, it aims to raise awareness and reduce its usage through data-driven initiatives.

Success will be measured by successfully implementing the survey and achieving the target sample size of over 100 respondents, and ensuring demographic representation across different student groups. Then using the data collected to create targeted initiatives to address problem areas and propose alternatives to single-use plastic.

This contributes to positive change by reducing plastic waste entering landfills and oceans from the Burnaby Mountain Secondary community and decreases the carbon footprint associated with single-use plastic production and disposal. It also empowers Burnaby Mountain Secondary students to participate in environmental decision-making within their school and demonstrates how local actions connect to global environmental justice issues and builds momentum for broader sustainability initiatives in the school system.

Pinetree Environmental Club, Pinetree Secondary

Team

Maya Kabiri, Karissa Wong, Laraine Lam, Morgan Holmes, Jaycee Binhue, Soogol Maarefvand, Lanna Ulanday and mentor, Tim Baker

Project name

Sorting Through Wasteful Habits

Description

This project aims to improve waste practices at Pinetree Secondary through visual infographics placed on various waste bins, and overall education and awareness of proper sorting techniques. Success will be measured using before and after photos of waste bins at the school. Before photos show what is being thrown in garbage/recycling/compost before the informational posters are put on the bins. After photos show what is being thrown in garbage/recycling/compost after the informational posters are put on the bins.

This contributes to environmental sustainability in many ways. One way is through building habits in young people so that they know how to sort their waste when they finish school and move out, having to then sort their own household waste. Another way is that it improves cleanliness around the school, keeping rodents and other pests away. Lastly, it will help to reduce contamination by improving waste sorting practices. Previous items being thrown into recycling that contaminated the bin such as food soiled cardboard that then contaminated other recycling items might now be put in compost for example.

Environment Club, Riverside Secondary School

Team

Vanessa Huynh, Jenny Lee, Kara Huynh, Seannah Aranui, Layla Fahandezh, Amy Hobenshield, Qayim Mecklai, Campbell Pearse, Zander Pope, Tawseef Siddique and mentor, Ava Ryalls

Project name

The Cafeteria Sorting Experiment

Description

Our objective is to gain insight into the garbage, recycling and compost sorting habits of staff and students at Riverside. We aim to improve sorting habits near the cafeteria with hopes of expanding our project around the school. We are conducting a survey wherein two club members observe sorting habits of a particular trash sorting bin over the lunch break before and after displaying a poster with examples of items that are compost, recyclable, or garbage. Club members will make note of whether people are sorting their items appropriately or not.

Pollution from plastic waste and other materials are extremely damaging to the environment. By encouraging and educating staff and students about how to correctly sort items, we will be preventing recyclable and compostable materials from ending up in landfills. This project promotes sustainability through circularity and allowing materials to take on a second life!